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2.22.2005

what i'm reading

I'm still reading Seymour Hersh's Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. I am absolutely in awe of Hersh as a writer and reporter. And absolutely horrified (and terrified) by what he reports.

The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, which I was reading as counterweight to Chain of Command, didn't hold my interest, and I quit early on. Why a book by one of my favorite baseball writers, about my most beloved teams (1996 through 2001 Yankees) didn't captivate me is inexplicable. But it didn't.

There are quite a few new novels that I want to read, such as Philip Roth's The Plot Against America and James Kelman's You've Got to Be Careful in the Land of the Free, but I'll wait for the paperback on both. I'm also about ready to dive into another nonfiction binge; I'm thinking of Robert Caro's LBJ books.

But first, I decided it's time to tidy up (as my British friends say). I dug deep into my to-read list for books that have been on it for a good ten or twelve years, still unread. Of course, some of those titles no longer interested me; that's why they've been on the list for so long. (Delete!) But others were just never available when I was in the library, and weren't books I wanted to own.

Thanks to the New York Public Library's online catalog system, I requested a small stack of books that I'll pick up at a local branch as they come in: High Cotton by Darryl Pinckney, The Sweeter The Juice by Shirlee Taylor Haizlip, What's Eating Gilbert Grape by Peter Hedges, July's People by the great Nadine Gordimer, Patchwork by Karen Osborn, and Wildcat Falling and Wildcat Screaming by the Australian author Mudrooroo. If any of them are very good, I'll let you know.

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You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing, there will be no result.Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.Margaret Mead

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.Karl Marx

There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.Howard Zinn